As you check in with - cHEF Be - you will hear about the solutions to bringing our food system closer to home, what obstacles we must over come, the horrid realities of our modern industrial food system, the helpful hints on how to grow more food close to our homes, & the helpful hints on how to avoid the unnaturally produced foods that often find their way to our family's tables from thousands of miles away!
{that well traveled food should be on other nation's tables!}

In good time I too will make this page all sexy & such with cool tools, helpful links,in text links, book lists, recipe links, & movie roles.

Until when, please continue checking in & help in bringing you & your families meals closer to what Granny might have place on the table!

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Last updated 01/28/2012
[Please send in your synopses of these films for future organization of this thorough compilation of food film.]

Food Movies:

(Ron) Urban Homesteading?
? Crazy Sexy cancer?
?humankind?
“Nourish: food + community”
37 Uses for a Dead Sheep
A Community of Gardeners By Cintia Cabib
Against the Grain
American Beer
American Dream
American Fair
American Farm
American Harvest
Asparagus! (A Stalk-umentary)
Back to the Land...Again
Bananas!
Beer Wars
Big River (A king Corn Companion)
Big Spuds, Little Spuds
Big Sugar
Bitter Harvest?
Black Gold
Blood OF the Beasts
Broken Limbs: Apples, Agriculture and the New American Farmer
Brookford Almanac
Bulls*** (*)
Buyer Be Fair
Challenging Impossibility
Chow Down Gage Johnston & Andrew Lipton
Chris Bedford's new film "Getting Real about Food & the Future"
Chulas Fronteras
Coca Cola Kid
Consuming Kids: The Commercialization of Childhood
Controling Our Food ("The World According To Monsanto")
Corner In Wheat
Corporate Agriculture: The Hollow Men/Alternative Agriculture: Food for Life (CBC)
Darwin's Nightmare
Death on A Factory Farm
Diet Wars
Dirt
Dispatches: Supermarket Secrets
Dispatches: The Supermarket That's Eating (Britian
DIVE!DIVE! Living Off America’s Waste
Eat At Bill's
EATING ALASKA
Fast Food Nation
Fast Food Women
Food
Food Fight
Food For Change
Food For The Future
Food For Thought
Food INC
Food Matters
Foodimentary
Foodstamped
Forks Over Knives
FRESH
From THe Ground Up
Fuel (bio-fuels argument)
Garbage! The Rovolution Starts at Home
Genetic Time Bomb
GMOs & the Changing Face of Agriculture Series
Good Food: Sustainable Food and Farming in the NorthWest
Growing Awareness
Growing Change: A Journey Inside Venezuela's Food Revolution Simon Cunich
Grown IN Detroit
Hamburger America
Harvest of Fear (NOVA/Frontline)
Home Grown
Hot Potatoes
How to Get Fat Without Really Trying Peter Jennings
How To Save The World: One Man, One Cow, One Planet
http://www.channel4.com/news/dispatches/society/tesco)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiJ_3JGRgDI&feature=player_embedded#
Hybrid
In Organic We Trust
In Search of Good Food
In The Poison of the Pampas
In The Same Boat
Ingredients
Is Wal-Mart Good for America?
Killer At Large
King Corn
Know Your Mushrooms
LBS
Le sang des bêtes (a.k.a. Blood of the Beasts)
Les glaneurs et la glaneuse
Life and Debt
Living on the Wedge: Wisconsin's Artisan Cheesemakers
Lunch Line (The Movie)
Mad City Chickens
McLibel
Meat The Future
Media That Maters: Good Food Jim Hightower as host
Modern Meat
Mondovino
Mumford Farms
Nature: Silence of the Bees
Nourish: Food + Community
Off the Menu: The Last Days of Chasen's
one man one cow one planet
Our Daily Bread
OurTown
Peanuts
Pig Business
Playing with Poison
Polycultures: Food Where we live
Queen of the Sun
Rancho California (Por Favor) *
Red Persimmons
Regenerative Agriculture
Ripe For Change
Robert Fortune: The Tea Thief
Slow Food Revolution
Smokestack Lightning
Still, The Children Are Here
Store Wars
Strong Roots,Fragile Farms
Super Size me
SuperMarkets Inc (CNBC?)
Supper Deconstructed
Sustainable Table: What's On Your Plate?
Tableland
Terminator Tomatoes
The Chicken Stampede
The Cove
The Dying Fields
The Economics of Happiness Helena Norberg Hodge
The End of the Line
The Farmers Wife
The Future of Food
THE GARDEN
The Gleaners and I
The Global Banquet: Politics of Food
The GMO Film Project
The Golbal Banquet: Politics of Food
The Grange Fair: An American Tradition
The Meaning of Food (PBS)
The Natural History of the Chicken (PBS)
The Organic Opportunity (CHris Bedford)
The Persuaders (Frontline)
The Price of Aid
The Price of Sugar
The Real Dirt on Farmer John
The Soil Solution
The Vanishing of the Bees
The Weight of Obesity...A Balanced Reality
The Wheat Movie
The World According to Monsanto
Think Twice
This IS WHAT FREE TRADE LOOKS LIKE
To Market TO Market to Buy a Fat Pig
Trade Secrets" A Moyers Report (PBS)
Truck Farm
Two Angry Mom's (Food Fight)
Urban Agriculture on the Move
Urban Roots (Detroit Farms..)
Vanishing of the Bees
Victims of Cheap Coffee
Wal-Mart Nation
Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price
Waste=Food
We Feed The World
West Philly Grown
What WIll We Eat (a film by Chris Bedford?)
What Will We Eat?
What's For Dinner?
WHAT's ON YOUR PLATE?

Friday, December 25, 2009

Yes, Today is my Mother's day of birth. It too happens to be the most widely celebrated day of gifting. If Thanksgiving has become thankstaking, or perhaps a thankful celebration of the gifts from the earth for us to gluttonously & ravenously ingest then digest as we try to fight turkey induced sleep in front of the big screen with team red & team blue running from one side to the other...

I arrived in Portland 3years ago & told myself after 3years I would settle in & begin fully pursuing my ventures once more...

After Rolling across this country dumpster diving & beginning my food stamp thriving daily dream life.
I was telling a friend of how I've bought near zero new items since I left my distorted days of Fortune magazine reading & Italian shoes shopping 3 years ago.
I was telling of how much my schtuff is now wearing out. This friend responded by stating simply "give stuff away", new stuff will come.

So in this spirit of giving... ... ...

I've decided my favorite way to do this at present is begin by giving ideas!

So, with no further ado, my first idea? ?Dream?
{share it borrow it change it create it help create it make it happen!}

Community Gardens!

Yes, I know what your thinking. That sounds quite antiquated...

Though, perhaps "Community Gardens" as we know them is the antiquated idea.

First the issues present in the current manifestation of "Community Gardens"

Gardens are what began our urban sprawl so many moons ago.
Man arrives in fertile valley, builds a house & plants a garden, neighbor moves in & does the same.
new neighbor comes in builds a house & plants a garden then carves a road to the other two. Look around you, you get an idea of where we've come.

Our cities were created by many people taking over land & claiming it as their own space. We can better share this space & all prosper!

-"community gardens" are placed on some of the least utilized land around.
This land is often under utilized for reasons of design. It is private parking, particularly noisy parcels, out of the way of public transit, previous sites of polluting industry, people must travel too far to tend it & on & on...

-These "community gardens" are generally divided into individual plots
Once again partitioning community!

-These community gardens often consist of virtually a singular micro climate.
Yet, We try growing everything. Being jaded by only marginal success when most everything we want to try growing will better flourish when more properly placed.
Proportionally spread throughout the broader neighborhood instead of being pushed into a hidden parcel.

A COMMUNITY AS GARDEN, A SOLUTION!

Dispersed microplot gardening!

Your Community Can Be Your Garden!

So, The concept is that our communities should indeed BE our community gardens!!!

Many of us have front back & side yards we spend countless dollars hiring others to maintain. Some even feel obliged to spend their scant free time beyond the 8-6 sodding, fertilizing, aerating, edging, mowing & ?weeding?!?

OUTRAGEOUS!

In overcoming all these issues & costs in maintaining land near our homes we form a gardening collective. "Community Gardening"

-communicate with your neighbors!
I reckon "neighborly" is adjective for good reason!

-utilize all available space for what it can grow!
Everywhere has a microclimate that a particular plant will thrive within!

-Plant only what grows best at your location
Since you've been "neighborly" you have plenty to share with your neigbors & they too share from their unique microclimates.
{imagine you have a side yard getting less light, okay.. Potatoes it is.
your neighbor has a front lawn getting scorched, okay.. tomatoes it is.
your neighbor has a back porch for entertaining, okay.. herbs it shall be.}

Through utilizing each micro plots micro climate; we create abundance by allowing nature to specialize & growing what grows best.
Through "neighboring" we create an environment for sharing the abundance our micro plot produces & too experience providing & being provided for by our community.
We then allow each specifically planted micro plot to contribute to the grander"COMMUNITY AS GARDEN"

Foodcentric -Be-

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About Me

Started in commercial food service at age 12, much later... upon realizing something was less than perfect; when most all my "Organic" food was coming from Californian deserts... Moved West to better understand why our food system is so disconnected (or for that matter too concentrated & integrated) & foster community through food system change.